Bleep to Bleep

Recording information: Atelier de Musique Electronique, Paris, France.
The title of the Micronauts' (mini-)LP debut is just as good as any, considering all but one of the songs feature "bleep" in the title, and there's a four-part series entitled "Baby Wants to Bleep." It's also completely in keeping with the duo's aesthetic, which injects a sense of humor and off-hand charm into the often sterile and increasingly academic field of acid techno. They function as a near-perfect incarnation of classic acid acts like Altern-8 or the KLF, both of whom produced great music but also recognized and exploited, for comic effect, Britain's acid revolution during the early '90s. With all the mayhem and track-to-track flow of the best hip-hop DJs (even though they're performing on 303s and 909s instead of turntables), the Micronauts tear their way through squelchy acid hysteria and continually test the upper limits of the frequency range. Though most of the humor is inherent in the track titles, the music is so kinetic that it's easy to envision Monier and Issakidis smirking behind their boxes even as they were programming the album. Except for the heavily processed freeform-electronics piece ("Bleeper 0+2") that cuts the album in two, Bleep to Bleep offers plenty of tweaked acid patterns and quite a few trips through heavy reverb. ~ John Bush